giving my feet a hand

Now, about that skeleton tie-up and the whole countermarche thing…

One of the many things I love about my loom is its generous shed.  WIth the shafts fully tied up I get over three inches between the raised and the lowered shafts, and a correspondingly large space for that beautiful Bluster Bay shuttle:

That black line shows the gap between the tops of the shafts.  But if I only tie up the shafts to be raised, then I get this measly thing:

No need for a black line on this picture since the tops of the shafts are all cluttered together.  This was worrying me while I was setting up the warp, but as soon as I sat down to weave it was obvious that all I needed was a helping hand.

As I depress the treadles and the shafts begin to rise, I put my hand into the gap and press the untethered shafts down.  It is not going to give me super-speedy weaving, but compared with using a table loom we’re flying along.

I worked out a little block design to try so now I have five pattern tie-ups in operation and I’ve been playing about with colours.  I have a drawer full of bobbins with bits of yarn left on them that I can’t bear to waste — I can never judge it exactly, can you? — so I bring them out at the start of a warp: firstly to spread the warp and check for threading errors, and secondly to approximate possible future colours before I go ahead and wind more bobbins.

In this next picture, the bright pink silk is there so I can see my blocks taking shape, not because I plan to use bright pink.  I am thinking of using greens, blues and yellows since these are the colours of our dinner plates and I have sampler table mats in mind.  Here’s a blue sideplate trying on its new clothes.

I am noticing three things that interest me.  The tabby weft plays a bigger part than I had expected and a leftover bit of teal silk was really effective in this role.  I have plenty more of that silk so I’m pleased about that.  Also the effect of the pattern colour is quite marked in the non-pattern areas — that little bit that comes through from the other side is surprisingly powerful.  And finally the pairing of the pattern rows reminds me of overshot.  If you look carefully you’ll see that in the third block from the fell (the one just touching the rim of the plate) I did an odd number of pattern picks so that I could change the way the pairs fall and see which layout I prefer.  I haven’t quite decided, but I’m leaning toward the earlier arrangement where there is one odd pick at the beginning and end of each block.  The complete sets of matching pairs (as seen under the plate) are just a bit too twee.  But I may change my mind about this.

“giving my feet a hand” was posted by Cally on 20 Oct 2008 at http://callybooker.wordpress.com